Sophonie

On paper, Sephonie sounds like the kind of game I would love. After all, I'm a huge fan of adventures set on mysterious islands, I like when games mix disparate genres, there's a cool science theme at its core and the story isn't afraid to go in some wild directions you won't see coming. What's more, this is the newest title from publisher Analgesic Productions, who recently came out with a fantastic role-playing game called Anodyne 2: Return to Dust. All this should have added up to a game I couldn't help but gush over, yet here we are about to start a very different review. What happened? Find out now as I talk through my many disappointments in this review of Sephonie.

Told through a series of convoluted flashbacks, this is the story of Amy Lim, Riyou Hayashi and Ing-wen Lin, a trio of scientists from three different parts of the world who have been sent to a mysterious island off the coast of Taiwan. They are there to analyze the island's rare species using a new (and largely untested) technology known as ONYX. But what should have been a simple assignment is immediately derailed when their boat crashes onto the coast and one of the scientists comes down with a new type of illness. Something weird is definitely going on, and it's up to this trio to work together in order to survive long enough to find out what's going on.

A lot of this game involves us exploring the small island and using the ONYX technology to analyze and link the rare species we run into. Both on the surface and through a massive cavern system found inside what appears to be a hollow mountain, most of the game has you running, jumping, climbing and using parkour to explore new parts of the island and link up all of the new lifeforms. The good news is that the island isn't after our heroes and everything is largely non-violent, though you'll need to watch your step, because you don't need to be a world-famous scientist to know that falling down a bottomless pit is bad for your health.

When you're not running across the wall to get to the next platform, you'll be analyzing the new species through a simple (yet addictive) puzzle game. It's basically a play on the Tetris or Puyo Puyo formula, where we manually place puzzle pieces on a bunch of differently-sized boards in hopes of matching at least three colors. The trick is that you only have so much room, so you'll need to place the limited number of pieces carefully so that you match as many like colors as you can before wiping the board. Match too few and you'll lose a little bit of health. The goal is to keep matching colors and wiping the board until you have successfully linked the species, which may take a few rounds to complete.

While not especially difficult, I like that the game is constantly finding ways of challenging you in these puzzle segments. As we try to link bigger and more impressive creatures, we'll have to contend with obstacles, like rocks, walls and characters that move around the board destroying the blocks you placed. You'll also have to put up with challenging boss puzzles, like the one where you can only place pieces on spots that are lit up by the cavern's bugs. This not only forces you to play the game differently, but it also makes earning the required number of connections a lot tougher.

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Linking these new and rare species isn't just for research purposes, because you'll actually learn valuable information from them that can be used on the island. For example, this is how we learn to parkour across the side of a wall. Later species will give our heroes the ability to dash through the air and even grapple using the many floating creatures found in (and out) of the cave. This is how we gain access to new parts of the island, as well as pick up more details about this strange but captivating story.

The truth is, I have little bad to say about the storytelling in Sephonie. The way it's presented is a little strange and way it jumps through time is a little convoluted, but I ultimately appreciate the leaps it takes. This is a story that isn't afraid to spend ten minutes talking about how everything fits together, and I appreciate the amount of work that went into telling a unique and interesting story. This game makes some wild swings, and I personally feel like it pays off in a big way.

Had Sephonie been nothing more than this story and the puzzle segments, I likely would be here recommending it as a brand-new indie gem. Unfortunately, I can't do that, because so much of this game relies on the exploration and platforming, which is, by far, the weakest aspect of the game. I'm not going to sugarcoat things: The third-person gameplay sucks. It's atrocious. It's some of the worst 3D platforming I've experienced in decades. I wish that were hyperbole, but it's not.

When I tell you that this is a game about climbing up platforms and running on the walls, you probably assume that pulling off those moves will be easy and fun. Nope. This isn't Mirror's Edge, but rather a 3D game that gets just about everything wrong. Your parkour moves are so limited that they almost never save you from a simple misstep. The run button will make you sprint in the direction your character is facing, which isn't always the way you want to run. The loose gameplay makes it far too easy to miss a floating platform. The stage designs are specifically made for you to fall to your death dozens of times before finding the right path. The fact that you'll constantly go into picture-taking mode because of the crummy button layout. And if that wasn't enough, the camera is unruly and sometimes has a mind of its own, making it even harder to run on the walls, make a perfect jump or just get around like a normal video game character. This game feels like a mid-1990s PlayStation game made by somebody working with 3D environments for the very first time, and failing. I hate the way this game controls.

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I'm also not a big fan of the way it looks. From the opening cinema, I couldn't help but feel like something was off. The narrator was an undefined blob, which made me wonder if it was texture that hasn't loaded correctly. Unfortunately, that's just the way it looks. While I like the colorful surface and beach areas, so much of this game takes place in dark and boring caverns. The most visually interesting parts of the game involve the trio reliving individual moments of their life, but these inspired bits are completely ruined by the awful gameplay. The best-looking parts of Sephonie are the cool creatures we have to link with, though most of that time is spent solving a puzzle.

For at least a few hours, it was those puzzles that helped keep me invested in the game. While I hated playing the platforming parts, I had a lot of fun matching colors and placing puzzle pieces. But even that started to get old and repetitive after a while. And that's the point where Sephonie becomes a real slog. With a squandered premise and awful gameplay, this is bound to be one of the most disappointing games of the year.